What about "V" and "B"?
A little while ago, I was reading an old post regarding the pronunciation of "B" and "V" The responses were fairly good, as it was evident that most of them knew their Spanish very well, and the answers were OK but not complete. However, when I attempted to post my response, the post had been deleted. The question was "What is the difference between "b" and "v"? As I have studied what is called "descriptive linguistics" I think that I can throw a little more light on the matter.
B/V in descriptive linguistics is called a "bilabial fricative." This means that your lips buzz together instead of buzzing your lower lip against your front top teeth. That is called a labio dental fricative.
However not even natives are able to do a perfect bilabial every time, as the sounds coming before b/v and after will influence the sound of the b/v.
When "b/v" comes between vowels, even across two separate words, it will get pronounced more like the English "V"
Ex. Hablaba, maravilla, Segovia, acabaron, a ver. All of these will have a sound very much like the English "v."
On the other hand, when "b/v" is at the beginning of a "breath group" That is, when you're beginning a new sentence with a word starting with "b/v" It will have more of an explosive sound--much like the English "b."
Examples. Ven acá. Bingo, Vámonos, Bésame. All have the sound approximating the English "B" In fact many natives will pronounce exactly like the English "B"
When b or v are found in most all other positions, especially following an "n" or "l", it will have the what I am calling the English "B" Sound,
En vez de, alboroto, albur, embestir. . There is a joke regarding the last word.
Talking about "el pobro toro" en las corridas de toros:
"Primero embiste, luego en bisté." First he charges, then (he's) in steak.
Both of these phrases have the hard "B" sound.
Chau
5 Answers
Victoria Bitter no suena bueno en español, pero su sabor es bueno.
Aplauso para V B .
While your post may be true for most of the Spanish-Speaking world (from my experience it's at least true in Spain and Mexico), I wonder if it's true everywhere. Specifically, in the song Vengo, I hear Ana Tijoux (from Chile) pronounce "V" word initially as the English phoneme /v/, not /b/ as you'd expect.
Likewise, in Billy y Las Botas, the singer sings "Su corazón le dio un vuelco", where "un vuelco" is pronounced "un vuelco" as opposed to "um buelco" as you'd expect.
I could be mishearing things, but I think in certain regional dialects (while /b/ and /v/ are still merged into one phoneme) they may not always be the bilabial fricative.
Blad the Impaler, does not have the same ring to it .
Neither does a "Vloody Mary"
Great post, I tried listening for the differences without any luck.
Costa Rica appears to be a little different but that is nothing new.
Pura vida - puda bida.
Voy a ver - boy a ber
Voy - boy, in fact in a text messages I had received a long while ago, 'Ya me boy'.
In a book I have Costa Rican Spanish it states "V (is) a soft 'b', half way between a 'v' and a 'b'. I don't hear that either.
In this photo, that I took a while back, " botar" is misspelled. Are the two, 'botar' and 'votar', pronounced with the b sound, the v sound or both respectively? Here they are the same, with b.
Thanks.
Very descriptive Daniela- thank you 
Daniela muy descriptivo - gracias
